CMS funding doesn’t matter, if a program wants you they will take you. The way the funding works depending on program is you have direct funding and indirect funding, only your indirect funding may be reimbursed at 50-75%. But if any GME program is over their certain aliquot of residents all residents would be funded this way as well. Fellows are funded similarly. Works better for larger programs that already have 1000 residents.
There are huge amounts of medicine trained people who go into radiology, including some legends like Jeffrey Galvin who is a pulmonologist (
Galvin, Jeffrey | University of Maryland School of Medicine)
As far as competitiveness goes, frankly it doesn’t matter. Bronx is a medicine trained subspecialist, this alone is enough to set him apart from the crowd. That being said it’s not like you are a medical student, if you apply and don’t get in your worst case scenario is going back to your 500k/yr job lol